The Best Defense
by krakens
Summary: The mission is over, the team has some downtime, and Gaby wants to learn to fight.


The work Waverly has for them in Istanbul involves disenfranchising a handful of associates of the Vinciguerra family. Not only does it feel like overkill after what they've already done to the man and woman themselves, but it's easy work and they finish it in short order.

Once they're on the plane out of Turkey, the reality of the situation finally starts to settle in.

"So, what's next?" Napoleon asks.

"We wait," Waverly says from where he's piloting the small aircraft.

"For what?" Illya grumbles from where he sits alone in the row behind them. Gaby glances over her shoulder at him, all huddled over and too big for the seat.

"Something to crop up," Waverly says in a tone that Gaby's become too familiar with since she met him; he knows something important, doesn't care if she knows he knows, and definitely isn't going to tell her what it is.

"What?" she asks anyway.

"I'll know it when I see it," Waverly says. An irritated silence settles over the cabin, and though they are quiet none of them are calm. Gaby feels too-tightly strung like a bow about to snap, Napoleon is stiff-backed as he looks out the airplane window, Illya's vibrating like a tuning fork.

That's the moment she realizes they were running purely on momentum; the work was the only thing keeping them on their feet. Even if their new organization is _technically_ sanctioned, it seems likely that the stunt the boys pulled with her father's computer disk probably constitutes some kind of treason. (Her father is dead, she remembers dully. Her father is dead and she definitely can't go home and now maybe they can't either.)

But they haven't had time to discuss the ramifications of any of that, or really even think about it at all. Now that it looks like they'll be idling for a while, she can't keep the questions out of her head.

Somewhere over Yugoslavia, she nods off, and when she wakes up as they're preparing to land she discovers that someone has covered her with their suit jacket – a tiny gesture, but for a second she feels more sure about the future than she even knew was possible.

* * *

At the airfield in Zurich, there is a beautiful red convertible waiting for them. Gaby is quite cruelly denied driving privileges and so has to settle for putting her feet on the back of the passenger seat instead. She rolls her weight from heel to heel until Illya shoots her an irritated glance over his shoulder. She sinks lower down into her seat, smirking as she pulls her sunglasses down and lets her head loll into the wind, cold and wild and biting against her warm cheeks.

* * *

Waverly drives them to a sprawling manor high on the hill with a gorgeous vantage of the city and the lake. The others are more preoccupied with the view than Gaby, who is distracted by a tantalizing glimpse into the open garage, which looks unnecessarily large and promisingly well-stocked.

"This is one of sixteen similar facilities at our disposal," Waverly tells them as they walk up the loose gravel driveway.

"Ah, so this U.N.C.L.E. venture, not really a spur of the moment idea, is it?" Napoleon asks.

"It's more of a long-standing labour of love," Waverly admits as he unpockets a ring of mismatched but ornate keys.

"How many agents do you have working for you?" he asks.

"Including the three of you?" Waverly asks as he fits a key into the brass lock, taking a moment to play-act a mental headcount. "Three."

With that he opens the door and ushers them into their new headquarters, which is half the mansion it always was while the other half has been gutted and refitted with state-of-the-art technology. Among the amenities are a spacious sun-soaked kitchen and their own private rooms, quite the step up from the one cramped room they'd been camped out in while they were in Istanbul.

* * *

The boys disappear to the depths of the building for some time after that, leaving Gaby to her own devices. She absolutely wrecks one of her very expensive dresses with motor oil during her excursion into the garage, and when Napoleon bumps into her later he wears a look of quiet mortification and insists they drive into town to buy her more appropriate house clothes.

"Are you ever going to let me pick out my own things?" she complains once they've reached a sufficiently chic boutique.

"Once you're better at it," Napoleon says, holding up two options for her. She picks the one that looks less expensive, but like he said – she doesn't really know anything about fashion.

"I don't know why I need designer clothes in the first place," she says, trying on a pair of sunglasses that might be even bigger than the last pair she procured.

"Appearances are very important," Napoleon says as he lays out the clothes he intends to purchase on a divan. "And it's easier to pretend you're a war orphan without two dimes to your name than it is to pass as a blue blood socialite. That's a lie you have to live."

Gaby holds her sunglasses up above her eyes to look at him. "Ah, spy lessons. Here I thought you and Illya were just born fussy."

"That too," he says, and she can't help but smile as he plucks the sunglasses from her hand and deposits them in the pile of purchases.

In the end, he lets her pick out a couple outfits for herself, which is a relief. But the best part of the evening is the drive home, when she finally gets behind the wheel of the convertible. The road up the hill is full of hairpin turns, and she could swear some of the color drains out of his otherwise impassive face every time she whips around one of them at full speed.

* * *

Gaby feels much more herself in bright green pedal-pushers with her hair tied up in a scarf, and with a good night's sleep under her belt for the first time in a week she's not content to just sit around.

Her boredom sets in before they are even done with breakfast; the others sit around the table silently as they eat and leaf through a newspaper, a dossier, a small book. Gaby's bare feet are propped up on the table, much to Waverly's annoyance, and she spins her table knife between her fingers idly as she watches them.

"I want to learn to fight," she says. None of them look up, but Illya acknowledges her statement with a nearly imperceptible nod of his head.

"That wasn't part of your secret agent training?" Napoleon asks with a veneer of derision that she doesn't totally buy.

"We couldn't exactly take her to MI6 to teach her how to throw a punch," Waverly reminds him. "But I'm too old to be horsing around with someone your age."

"I will teach her," Illya offers. Gaby sets down her knife and smiles at him and he looks up from his book for just long enough to return the expression.

"I'll help," Napoleon adds a beat later, under scrutiny from Waverly, and Gaby doesn't like _that_ little interaction at all.

* * *

The grand salon is on the side of the house that has been renovated; this room has become a gymnasium, but it seems whoever made the conversion couldn't be brought to destroy the fine moldings and chandeliers. The pastel-painted wall panels and crystal-befitted accents have survived, and clash badly with the bold primaries of the floor mats and equipment. A wall of mirrors with a barre has been set up against one side of the room, making it seem cavernously large, but Gaby can tell that the fixture is freestanding and sits atop the original wall rather than replacing it.

She's back in one of those mod little outfits the boys love so much to dress her up in. As counterintuitive as this seemed at first, Napoleon had done a decent job rationalizing it ("It's what you'll be wearing while we work," he'd insisted. "You won't have time to change clothes if you get into a scrap"). And they're both wearing suits, so she can't cry inequity.

Despite the fact that he's the one that was strong armed into it, Napoleon has taken point on her lessons. "First I have to see what I'm working with," he says, turning his back on her to shuck his suit jacket. "Just do what you'd normally do."

But of course, he has never been witness to her primary fighting tactic, and he's still preoccupied with folding his jacket properly when she collides with him, full speed, and sends them both sprawling to the ground as Illya steps out of the way at just the right second.

Napoleon is so flabberghasted by the entire turn of events that when she starts wailing on him with poorly executed punches, she manages to make contact once or twice before he grabs her hands and puts an end to it. She's out of breath and focused on her opponent, but she's pretty sure she hears Illya chuckle from across the room.

"You weren't _kidding_ ," Napoleon says aside to him before grumbling a handful of Russian words. One of the words, Gaby recognizes acutely.

(Midway through their second day in Istanbul, she'd taken some goon out all by herself while they were tied up doing something else. When they finally made it to her, Illya had spared her a fond look and mumbled something under his breath in Russian, a babble of unintelligible syllables.

He'd seemed embarrassed, later that night in their solitary hotel room, when she'd asked him what he'd called her, before he repeated himself.

"But what does it _mean_?" she'd pressed, and he'd been unwilling to answer.

Napoleon repeated the phrase himself, as if struggling with the language barrier. "It's a woman who… who…" Here he'd taken a pause to snap his teeth at her. Off the sight of her eyebrows raised, Illya had rushed to defend himself.

"It does not mean a woman who bites," he'd griped.

"It does in the parts of Russia _I've_ been to," Napoleon had insisted. Illya had scoffed in response, turning his attention away from both of them.

"Well?" she'd asked.

Illya had continued to demure; Napoleon had offered another feral sound by way of explanation, and Gaby had felt increasingly like she might have been the subject of some sort of ridicule all along. Finally, Waverly had intervened, not even bothering to look up from his newspaper as he spoke. "Spitfire, Gaby. It just means spitfire."

A beat had echoed through the room, alternatingly embarrassed and amused, before she broke it. "Am I the only person here who doesn't speak Russian?"

"Solo's grasp of the language seems a little experiential, but… yes," Waverly had said, giving her a single pointed glance and smile over the edge of the paper.)

"You should never turn your back," Illya reminds him, some of that laughter still in his voice.

"Alright," Napoleon gripes, picking Gaby up easily and depositing her next to him. He stands up and brushes some imaginary dust off of his waistcoat. Illya offers Gaby his hand and she takes it, on her feet in a second like she didn't weigh a thing. "Well first of all, don't do _that_ ever again."

"Why not?" Gaby asks, her hands on her hips. "It worked, didn't it?"

"Yes," Napoleon ekes out. " _Once_."

"You're just a sore loser," Gaby says with a dismissive wave of her hand. Out of the corner of her eye she sees the two of them exchange a look.

"Fine. Try it again." He gestures to Illya as he says it. Gaby considers him for a second as he rolls the sleeves of his shirt up to his elbows, and then in the moment where he breaks eye contact with her she rushes him.

But this time, Illya catches her easily by the waist and tosses her over his shoulder. No matter how she writhes she can't free herself from his grasp, and beating her fists on his back yields no noticeable effects.

"This has happened because you are small," Illya tells her frankly without putting her down. She goes limp in protest; once she's not flailing anymore she spots Napoleon leaning against the mirror across the room. "You must fight like a small person. If you attack a big man as a big man would, he will win."

Napoleon motions to his (lightly bruising) nose, and then kicks his left foot backwards to the right. It doesn't take her long to string the advice together and she promptly manages to land a glancing blow on Illya's face. In the moment of confusion where he drops her and she hits the mat with a _thud_ , she wraps her arms around his ankles and pulls him down with her.

A little scuffle follows, but she manages to end up sitting on his chest, pinning his arms down – although the fact that he lets her stay there must be a courtesy, given how easily he picked her up earlier.

"Looks like you've got things under control, Peril," Napoleon says. Illya gives his usual taciturn reply of a grunt, and she can feel his chest move between her thighs. "I'll let you handle it from here."

A moment after Napoleon has left, Gaby excuses herself from her perch and stands, offering her hand to him. He's still laying on the mat, his head resting against the ground as he stares at nothing in particular for a fleeting moment. Then he sits, and grabs her hand, leveraging himself against her as he stands. She has to lean into her heels to support his weight, and when their hands stay clasped for a moment too long she feels anchored in the most satisfying of ways.

* * *

They haven't had a lot of time _alone_ together since before Istanbul, and the sparring lessons become a reprieve in her day, a space for just the two of them. She's been making steady progress on dodging.

"Like dancing," he says as she successfully sidesteps another blow. "You're good at that."

"You really think so?" she asks, unable to keep a little of the wry tone out of her voice. He only makes a sound in response, but she thinks it's in the affirmative.

She dodges a few more times and then a thought occurs to her. The next time he takes a swing at her, she makes no effort to move out of the way; his fist stops surreptitiously before it comes anywhere close to her face. The corners of her lips tick up as he narrows his eyes at her. For all he is hot-tempered and volatile, he is also somehow a study in precision. She thinks maybe the composure, the control, is overcompensation for his rageful fits.

"Why have you stopped?" he asks.

"Hit me," she says.

For a second, he seems taken aback. Then, quite abruptly: "No."

"Why not?" she asks, and he can't even work up a response beyond a strangled sound of exasperation. "Punch me," she insists, motioning to her own face.

"No."

"I've never been hit before," she reasons. "Better now than when I'm fighting someone and it catches me off-guard."

"If you are a good enough dancer, nobody will be able to hit you," he says.

She punches him in the nose.

He closes his eyes tight and his lips are drawn thin. She's played this game before, she remembers. He'd threatened to put her over his knee and maybe some part of her had liked that. _Maybe_ , she thinks as he pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes still screwed shut, and there is a tug low in her stomach she can't deny.

"What are you doing?" he finally asks, peeking out at her.

"I don't like _dodging_ ," she says. "I like _fighting_."

"I know," he says. "And you are strong for your size, but it will not be enough."

She goes to punch him again, but this time he catches her arm and twists her around, pulling her against him until her back collides with his chest. He only needs one of his arms to hold her there, and though she struggles and tries to drop out of his grasp, she can't.

"You see?" he asks as she gives up and melts into his hold. His arm loosens around her waist and with her hands free she grabs two fistfuls of his sweater and manages to flip him, her own weight her favorite weapon yet again.

This time when they go down, he lands on top of her. He manages to catch himself on his arms before he totally and entirely crushes her, but she is still pinned to the mat by his solid form. His hand ends up by her face and she feels his fingers twitching towards the line of her jaw as they stay there like that, perfectly still except for their breathing.

"You must be more careful," he says, finally, his words hot on her cheeks.

"Must I?" she asks.

"You are wild," he says, and she does not miss the way his eyes drop to her lips or how his tone is lower than it was before. "Recklessness can get you killed."

She only just realizes how close they are now, how his fingers are toying with an errant strand of her hair, and—

"Waverly told me not to get involved with you," she says. He draws back immediately, which was not _exactly_ what she had wanted to happen. But she supposes she spoke for a reason, probably, and if she can't place what it was right now it's only because of the deafening sound of blood rushing in her ears.

He pushes himself up, sits back and leans his weight on his hands as she props herself up on her elbows. A meter between them still feels small even after the distance had been close to nothing.

"An order?" he asks, his face impassive.

"Friendly advice," she says. (They'd been standing on a balcony with a gorgeous view of the Hagia Sophia, but she hadn't been able to tear her gaze away from where Illya had been standing among party-goers in the courtyard below them. Waverly had noticed, of course. He'd probably known even before that moment. "Not a good idea, Gaby," he had told her with the stern disapproval of a father, which he is very much _not_.)

"Hmm," is Illya's only response before he stands and exits the room, cutting their lesson short.

Napoleon catches her in the hallway moments later. " _What_ did you do to Illya?" he asks, clearly amused, and she leans hard into the punch she deals to his shoulder.

* * *

After that, he avoids her quite successfully, which should be difficult even in so large a house – but he is a spy, after all. It shouldn't even _bother_ her that much, if she's being honest. She's barely known him a month. It shouldn't matter if she doesn't speak to him for a day or two. But still she sulks around until Napoleon intervenes.

"Let's go out," he offers. Waverly is a recovering alcoholic and so does not allow them to keep drinks in the house, but the city is only a short drive down the hill. As Napoleon opens the car door for her she catches a glimpse of Illya watching them from his bedroom window. Somewhat childishly, she hopes that he thinks something untoward is going on between her and Napoleon (nothing is: he'd offered once, that night she'd escaped from East Berlin. But he had posed it as so matter-of-fact a question, like he was asking if she wanted a glass of water or another blanket, that the effect was wholly unattractive and she'd turned up her nose at him. She's glad he doesn't hold it against her, but she's still not sure how he manages to convince so many women).

"Are you going to tell me what's going on?" Napoleon asks once they've got their drinks in hand. Gaby leans her weight against the bar, tilting her head back towards the ceiling, exasperated.

"Why would I do that?" she asks.

"Because I want to know," he says.

"You're horribly nosy, Napoleon," she says.

He scoffs into his drink. "Nobody calls me that," he says.

"I do," she says, off-hand, and all he can really do is nod in defeat.

Gaby drinks more than she probably should and by the time they leave she has to lean on Napoleon so she doesn't totter over. He wraps an arm around her shoulder to keep her warm against the cool night air, and for a second she thinks he means to kiss the top of her head, which she registers as something that would be an odd gesture. But he's really just ducking his head to whisper to her.

"Stay sharp," he says against her ear. "Those guys are looking for trouble."

She glances back over her shoulder and sees the ones he's talking about; following a little too close, hands tucked into their jacket pockets.

"Are they going to mug us?" she asks.

"Us… or someone else, if they're lucky," he says.

"Well, we should take care of them," she says, leaning her head on his shoulder as they walk.

"We're not vigilantes," he says.

"We are, a little," she counters. He thinks for a second.

"Fine," he says briskly, his arm slipping off her shoulder as he prepares to turn around and confront them. "But be _careful_. God knows I'll catch an earful if I bring you back with a scratch on you."

 _I'm not a car_ , Gaby thinks, vaguely insulted. But she doesn't have time to voice her complaints before they are caught up in the flurry of the fight.

* * *

When they get back to the house, Gaby is still buzzing with adrenaline, a little tipsy, and eager to pick another fight. And so she goes straight to Illya's room and pounds on the door with her closed fist.

"Come in," he says, and she pushes the door open.

He's playing a game of chess, solitaire, and the first thing she does is walk over and flip the board onto his lap, the little pieces scattering across the floor with a noisy clatter.

He sighs, looking up at her with an askance in his expression that he doesn't put words to.

"You're ignoring me," she says.

"No I'm not," he replies, setting the chessboard back on the table and standing to gather the pieces.

"Do not lie to me," she says, batting a knight off the board as soon as he puts it back in its place. "I'm not imagining things."

He stands there, looking at her, a handful of black and white pieces held chest height between them. "It's better this way," he finally says, his gaze dropping away from hers. _No, no_ , she thinks. That's not the answer at all.

When she advances on him, he steps back in kind. He is an immovable mountain of a man, but she moves him so easily. Finally his hits the sofa and sits down, but she does not halt her advance until she stands level with him, their legs nearly brushing.

"What do you want from me?" he asks, voice ragged. And maybe she doesn't know, exactly. Maybe that's her problem. But what she wants is _not_ to be ignored. She doesn't even want to fight him, not really.

She takes another step forward, their knees knocking together, and lays her hands on his chest, pushing him back against the sofa. Below them, she hears the chess pieces fall to the floor yet again, and his hand comes to rest on her leg.

She shivers under his touch. "Cold?" he asks, eyebrows knit in concern, and of everything he's ever done for some reason _this_ is the thing that causes her chest to swell with fondness. She shakes her head, even if his fingers _are_ cold where they bite gently into the soft skin of her thighs, and cradles his jaw in her hands.

If he tells her that Waverly is right, or if Napoleon bursts in unannounced, or they suffer any sort of interruption, she will go mad. So she tilts his face towards hers and closes the minuscule distance, savoring how he pulls her against him with an arm around her waist, and yes – maybe this is what she wanted all along.

* * *

In the early hours of the morning they lay tangled in his bed, and though she hasn't gotten any sleep and the shadow of a bad hangover is looming above her, she is aware these few moments of peace are going to be fleeting. Something will come up, or someone will notice she is missing and find them, but her limbs are heavy and she is content to stay a moment longer.

She thought that he'd finally fallen asleep, but she feels his fingers running down her arm to catch her hand in his. He laces their fingers together and turns her hand so that he can see her knuckles from where he lays behind her. They're bruised and scraped from where she threw a bad punch at one of the muggers last night; he'd noticed the injury almost immediately and has been _fussy_ about it ever since, as little a thing as it his. He kisses her there, and she pulls her hand away from his so she can turn over onto her other side and face him.

"You should sleep," she says, bringing her other hand up to run her fingers along the line of his cheek (he'd taken a blow there a few weeks ago when Alexander Vinciguerra had run his motorbike off the road, and even though it's healed now she remembers).

"So should you," he says, catching her hand again. This time his thumb runs over the bugged engagement ring he gave her, which she is only still wearing, because it had been useful to communicate in Istanbul and after that she'd kept – forgetting. She'd meant what she'd said about being her own woman, but she can do that and still like the gift he'd given her too.

He holds their hands away from their faces and looks at the ring, wearing a half-smile on his face. She pulls her hand away and buries her face in the blanket so he can't see her blush – but her effort is for nothing, if his tone is any indication when he says something to her in Russian.

"Hmm?" she hums, but she doesn't expect a response or translation. Her suspicions are confirmed: he only shakes his head, like he's trying to rid himself of that smile that's still on his face.

"Nothing," he says. "Sleep."

"You know," she murmurs as she shimmies further down into the burrow of blankets they're tangled in, her eyelids heavy with sleep. "I've been thinking I should learn to speak Russian."


End file.
